A Long Way From Home
by Squeegee Clean
Summary: As a totodile adjusts to the life she was dropped into, she gets wrapped into a web of problems that could change the course of history.
1. Rude Awakening

_The last thing she had seen and heard was a rush of the air past her ears as she made contact with the ground._

After that, she was out like a light. But that cold black dark she had been expecting for many decades didn't take her. Instead, it was a misty, minty green with a hint of the clinical and more than a hint of apathy.

It spoke to her.

She didn't understand it, but what she gleaned from at the very least the vague hints of inflection left by the sound waves she could catch through what may as well have been thick, fuzzy earmuffs was intended to be in some way comforting. Not that it helped when the last thing she saw in the waking world was rocky, jagged floors coming into contact with her head at approximately _too fast _miles per hour. The waiting room to the afterlife always seemed like it would be more blue, but the cloudy part was aced with honors.

Eventually, the green subsided and fell with her into the blackness she was anticipating. It crept upon her but when it could get a good grip it whipped her away and didn't let go for what may have been eons. All sound, previously merely incoherent and barely audible, now ceased, and all vision lost. All that was left was a blackness, or possibly dark grayness, which had a peculiar seemingly underwater quality to it. Yet her thoughts were not extinguished for another few minutes, open as she was to the possibility of it being years before her mind shut off. After a while, she refused to fight any longer, succumbing to what surely was the final darkness of death.

Until it wasn't.

Instead, one day she found that she could not only think but look and hear, concepts which, for the first time in her life, were _alien_.

Her sight was filled with visions of strange and yet strangely familiar creatures lined up facing and indeed looking at in contempt for it and contempt for themselves the stiff, decomposing corpse of a bipedal crocodilian covered head to toe in scales which may have meant to approximate the colors of blue and red in life but in death with the combination of spilled blood and the earliest manifestation of putrefaction have melded together to create a terrible marble pattern consisting of sickly greens, browns, blacks, and yellows. Its head was smashed open and its skull cracked, showing a missing portion of sickeningly gray-blue brain from a peep hole the size of a door key. Blood had already seeped down from the rest of its body to the back, pooling at the bottom. Its eyes bulged out to two different directions, discolored from being days removed from its death and likely helped by the blunt force trauma to the face. The arms seemed the most familiar, and so most alarming, as if she had been acquainted with them at some point long ago in the ancient past.

Try as she might, she couldn't shake the feeling.

The black, round mass of a still living creature in the middle of three turned to the pink one, scratching the back of his neck. If it had worked in the past, he had never seen it.

"Are you positive this is going to _work_?" he asked, incredulously.

The pink one responded negatively, though noted that not only had it worked so far, but that if it didn't completely work, they would have some time to attempt to find another method. Finally, he acquiesced. She was looking up when he grabbed her ankle and dragged her toward the body, and for all her attempts at resistance—she tried to wrest his hand from her leg but he kept a firm grip—after only a little while finally she was sent flying into the corpse. The pink one said a quick phrase, her vision quickly flashed a bight ivory white which lingered far longer than it ought to have, and the next time she tried to move her arm the nearly blackened rotting appendage initially belonging to the carcass moved instead.

Before she could turn her head to look at them the pink one said another phrase and the blood receded from the bottom of her body, it gained some color back, and her vision seemed to relax in a way, becoming much sharper. But before the body she was locked into was in anything considered good, or for the record _living_ shape, the changes stopped and she was let go, the last modification being the at least partial restoration of the corpse's jaw and nose.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," said the black mass, extending his arm.


	2. A Trip Into the City

The rest of the day was a blur. She wasn't quite fully there, shocked at how she had so quickly become the thing of her own scorn—and, to some extent, pity. Or, at least, inhabiting its' body; as of yet nobody has said anything to contradict her running theory of it once being a person with... what appears to be _her_ own thoughts, memories, and place in society. With that in mind, she had even felt somewhat guilty for assuming her identity after her apparently violent passing, as though through the gore, disfigurement, and rot those who she knew in life would recognize her immediately and gain the smallest inkling of hope of seeing their friend and daughter again.

With that in mind, she started formulating a plot to hide herself as much as she possibly could, her mind being aided by the harsh winter weather pattering against the walls of her host's wood and stone home. The softest noises came from above, as the water hit the thatched roof and trickled down the sides and eroded the calcimine whitewash just that little bit.

To get acquainted with her new form, the shadow creature she had yet to learn the name of had her board with an older man by the name of Uri, the host granting her the kindness of letting her stay in his house. He was a towering, gaunt vulpish thing with metal spoons in each hand and an awe-instilling Fu Manchu mustache on his upper lip.

To him, she revealed her amnesia, not remembering anything beyond the initial view of her current body, which she insisted on specifying as not hers. For all she knew, she was conjured into existence by one of the two for some higher purpose and wasn't let into the knowledge. If he knew, he wasn't telling; after this was brought up to him he merely swatted the thought away and scoffed. _Nevermind that,_ he dismissed, _it would take a grand mage greater in power than any recorded for that to be the case_. Nevertheless, she still had the lingering feeling. After all, if she were in their position in this hopefully hypothetical situation, she wouldn't have said either.

So, to return to the plot to enshroud herself in secrecy that she had zoned out on approximately a minute ago, she had considered the use of a cloak, something she knew existed as she had seen him wearing one as he walked outside. It covered most of his body, head to toe, and had a hood. If he could get one made for her, it would be perfect for the task.

With that, she took the candlesnuff and put it to work, extinguishing the last light in the room and leaving her in complete darkness to drift off into sleep, still a risky endeavor that may have lead to her never waking up again; not just if she were healthy but even now as she was, biologically speaking, far beyond deceased, with mere willpower—and a little bit of magic—being all that is keeping her from returning to the void.

The next morning, she remembered her contemplation and made her way toward Uri's room, making sure to be polite as she entered and asked in such a way as to put no pressure on him—_only if you would, that is,_ she stuttered, _I don't need it, it would just be helpful_. He said he would see what he could do, and made his way outside.

"I can put up various kinds of misdirections and disguises. The easiest for me is to just make people not notice you even if their eyes directly met yours," he said, "and the most difficult is making people percieve your touch as that of a living being."

She agreed to the first to not cause too much burden on her host.

With the sun shining on her cold skin, she felt somewhat less stiff, her stride more of a shamble than her typical waddle. Trusting that Uri's mental barrier worked, she made no effort to further conceal herself as they made their way from his cottage to the town square where a sizeable bazaar had been set up seemingly long ago in the center of a few buildings once used as houses but now unoccupied if not used as a shop. One of these buildings was their destination, a tailor's shop owned by what looked like a younger, less refined member of Uri's species, trading in mustache length for a thick tail. He strutted up to Uri, smiled, and said hello, before asking what the occasion for coming in was.

Letting the spell down as he was indoors, he pointed to the totodile and told him that she had requested a cloak of her own so as to not draw attention to herself.

The tailor agreed, and introduced himself as Penn. He took her by the arm, somewhat less roughly and far more ashamedly when she yelped after he most certainly tore it at least a bit, and lead her to a spot near a chest of drawers where he kept his measuring tape and paper. He chuckled to himself as he pulled them out, telling her that he _still gets flack for needing a tape and paper;_ others of his kind (including Uri) are able to keep all the measures in their heads and even accurately eyeball the proper measurements. Not him, he never really learned the same way that the others of his kind did.

"Say," he said while measuring her head, "you look somewhat familiar. There was a totodile around here a couple years ago that had freckles in a very similar place on her forehead to yours. I always liked how it looked on her."

It was the last thing she wanted to hear, tripping her up for a good minute. She didn't notice as he asked her to raise her left arm, he had to ask three different times. The story was already broken, so she figured that she might at least learn the details, starting with her age.

"Young. Totodile live to about eighty to a hundred, and she was six. That was about three years ago, so she'd be about eight now. Her whole family only lived here for a little bit, but left long ago to live closer to the ocean down by De Gama, a little fishing settlement out hundreds of miles away. I always remember a customer, that's a promise."

She noticed he was measuring and writing while maintaining the concentration to answer her questions effortlessly, checking the time on occasion as well. Finally, it was time to measure her from the neck down to the tip of her tail, and then he was done, writing down some notes before steadying the pencil on one empty corner of the page.

"Er, what was it your name was, again? I'm not actually sure I got it. I just want to make sure I don't mix up your cloak with someone else's."

That was a question she had no answer for, as much as she wanted one. She wracked and prodded her mind and couldn't pull one up. Desperate, she pulled the first word she thought up out of her mind and used it as her name, leading to the paper being signed under the name _Aspire_.

It would be a few hours away, a typical time sped up by 'Aspire''s short stature. Uri moved to pay, but Penn swatted it away, justifying it to him with a simple _it's a necessity, I would feel bad making you pay for it—this time, anyway,_ ending it with a wink and a grin. She was essentially making him work for free, so if anyone had the right to feel bad she felt it would be her.

They were out and on their way in just minutes after, spending the hours on a tour of town. Their first stop was the shop run by a pair of reptile twins (apparently the Kecleon brothers), obviously fraternal as one was purple and the other green. They were hocking their wares from a shack built in the middle of the center, a sign reading presumably their family name, alongside a smaller one of their hours and an even smaller one for the current date—December 9, 1480.

It was here that she got her first taste of action, as the Kecleon twins were being chased by a shrieking behemoth of a purple monster which had lopine elements mixed in with thousands of sharp spines running down his back. And she could absolutely tell the beast was a male, it was quite obvious; the signs, as they say, were massive. It was then that she started to wonder how much patronage Penn really recieved, considering how few members of society seemed to wear many articles of clothing.

Now wasn't the time to think about that.

Uri was already running toward the hulking aggressor, rubbing his hands together to do... something. She followed suit (even if it wasn't that quickly) and felt a sudden overwhelming and disorienting urge to regurgitate, leading to blackened, putrid water shooting violently out of her mouth at the three-eyed purple people eater terrorizing the Kecleon brothers. The force of the water jet knocked him on the ground, giving them time to get away, while the pounding rain stung against his skin and rendering him temporarily stunned with pain.

Uri caught up to him and restrained him, questioning him, but 'Aspire' shambled over to the brothers and asked for a possible motive herself.

They took a minute to catch their breaths and get their balance, but eventually said that they _don't know, to be honest; we'd never seen him before in our lives and he suddenly pops out from behind a building and charges._

They asked. Nobody recognized him, that's one thing for sure.

Purple Kecleon gave 'Aspire' a large, yellow apple, making sure to avoid touching her at all, and said it was their gift for saving them. Even if she did look like an instrument of evil, considering her status as a living, festering ball of dead flesh, rotting DNA, and thriving bacteria preying on it all.

The rest of the day went smoother, with Uri putting up a more advanced illusion to make her look normal to others for the time being. They stopped at the bank, the storage company, and any other building that looked important.

One last trip to Penn's tailor shop and she noticed Uri's shoulders relaxing when he was near him, as if they had been good friends long before. It was likely, and it would even explain the price break that he gave him.

They called it a night there, even though it was only five in the afternoon, and left for Uri's house.

"Remember, someone slaved over that cloak, so protect it with your life."

'Aspire' didn't need reminding, but to be polite she nodded in acceptance of the terms of use. The harsh rain let up a little, letting her see the sundown on the horizon.

Things might actually start to look up, soon. She's not dead, so there's a start.


	3. A Chance Meeting

Today was the day she would finally get to put herself to the test. Yesterday, she asked those two shopkeeper brothers if there was anything she could do to help, and while they said _there is nothing at the time, _they did later go on to note that _we will let you know if there is something to attend to. We have a way of knowing things._

Yeah, she didn't share that power. Not that she knew of. Maybe she would once she's alive again. Always a possibility, she supposed.

Anyway, enough about other people being far more in the loop about things than she was. Even if it was a feeling she both couldn't shake and really hated. It turns out, ignorance really is bliss. It didn't matter, anyway. If it was important things would fall into place and she'd figure out eventually.

So, at four in the morning—give or take some change—that's precisely what happened.

Or rather, partially anyway.

Uri shook her awake and gave her the message the kecleon brothers gave him—there's a disturbance out in a nearby town and since she's proven she can handle a nidoking, she's the one that gets to go. To sweeten the pot, she gets 50 gold pieces. That, to her untrained ear, sounded like a lot, depends she supposed on how big said pieces are. At the end of the day, cash was cash, and she felt the sudden urge to pay Uri back for his hospitality taking her into his home.

So, naturally, she agreed.

Once the church bells finally rung six in the morningx, she streched herself and readied for the trek to Vadsig Village.

* * *

It was well past eight-thirty when she arrived to the town she'd expected to be a lot smaller and lazier than she was met with. While not particularly large and bustling in the face of even a small town she had always envisioned the concept as, it was a decently active, well, small town with... a nidoking problem. Three of them, in fact.

The three issues were robbing a store run by a butterfree selling... butter. Appropriate, but that's a useless observation at the time, she ought to have started running by now.

Hey, what do you know? She already was, and was getting ready to violently regurgitate water at them before even she knew what was happening. She got off a few decent hits to the backs of their heads, even knocked one out cold. This raised the a problem, namely being the other two much angrier nidoking, one of them now much more willing to put up a fight.

A fight it was. A few shots of water and a thrown turnip later, she found herself tail-up, said appendage in the hand of the leader of the three. At least, she assumed so given he was wearing sunglasses. Primitive ones, fashioned out of a pair of medical pince-nez and some sort of woodstain, for sure, but sunglasses nonetheless. She might have to get a pair sometime, but for now she should probably start doing that "thrashing around" thing...

Then again, if she played dead—

If she played _deader_ then they would most likely assume she actually was more dead than she was and leave her alone.

That most definitely wouldn't work. So, defeated, she went back to thrashing and even got a clean shot or two off on them, nearly knocking off the leader's glasses. So, he slapped her and threw her on the ground, knocking her out instantly. In the fleeting moments before her head violently met the ground for the second time this week, she noticed they were both visibly weakened, hopefully someone could help finish the job.

* * *

That totodile that lay on the ground was just moving a second ago, but she looks like she's been dead for a good number of days! He had to do something, she gave him the chance to attack those nidoking that have been terrorizing the town.

So, he grabbed a few turnips and threw them square at the kings' faces. Having got their attention (and having caused a bit of pain in the process), he ran past them, turned around, and grabbed onto the sunglasses king's back. From this vantage point, he burned the two of their heads, jumping off and giving all of them a kick in a... particularly terrible place. He even winced himself at what he was doing but it solved the nidoking issue in an efficient manner. He wouldn't want to do it much more than that, out of visceral empathetic response.

But, at long last, they were knocked out cold. To finish the job, he grabbed a length of rope he keeps in his messenger-bag and tied them by the arms and hands as a precaution—after all, unconsciousness only lasts so long. The term for permanent unconsciousness is death.

Once they were securely tied up outside the shop, he went over to inspect the damage done to the totodile, who was quite unconscious at this point. Seemingly, permanently so.

* * *

Porfirio Kecleon stood out of the rear of the stand, observing the outside world and its inhabitants. The ponyta that rushed toward his door winded and ready to collapse told the story of the young, brave, and critically stupid totodile that tried to take on three nidoking and failed. He chuckled to himself, knowing better as to her condition when he described her state of decay. The ponyta then told of how a cyndaquil finished the job for her, dishonorably for sure but effectively. Like a good team, that unfortunately would certainly only have one outing. He wasn't sure about that.

After some extra updates about the state of the village, he turned around and headed back home, careful to not spill any of their payment, leaving Porfirio and Giado to themselves, contemplating what percentage to dock for needing help.

Well, at least those three kings weren't going to be a problem for a very long time.

* * *

She woke up in a different spot from where she was knocked out.

Not just that, but she was moving of an accord that was most certainly not her own, and if she was any wiser, she might have come to the conclusion that she was being taken somewhere.

Not thinking at all about the ramifications of a talking corpse, she groggily opened her eyes and let a _who's taking me where?_ out of her mouth.

Not tactically sound.

Her ride skidded to a stop as he looked to try to find the source of the voice, missing for a few minutes the formerly-dead, swinging tail of the body he was dragging. It smiled and looked into his eyes, taking off its hood and failing to stifle a laugh as he grew increasingly panicked.

"I won't bite", the corpse said, "at least, not you." It got up from its sitting and made its way closer to him, leading to him keeping the distance as much as he possibly could. "I'm not gonna hurt you," it said in a somewhat offended tone, crossing its arms and wagging its tail.

He didn't believe it and ran until his legs couldn't cooperate, bringing him all the way back to town. Never had this old village felt quite as nice to be in. At least, it did until he found himself feeling somewhat guilty for it, really having never given it even a wary chance.

But then how could he? It was a water type, and he was a fire type, there's no way he could win the bout if that would ever come to pass. Unless, that is, he trained and got stronger than it was...

So, he walked aimlessly into the forest, looking for any little creature to train himself up against. His mind was set, he would get stronger and stronger and protect his home from anyone that would threaten it. And, possibly, fight a few Mystery Dungeons as well...

It was very dark when he returned, tired and wondering where that reanimated corpse went.

* * *

She was halfway back to her own town when she heard footsteps, leading her to reflexively put her hood back on. This proved to be beneficial as a ponyta lit up the area around her and she turned her head away. It was only there for a few moments before it ran back to Vadsig Village, dropping a few gold coins and a letter.

Well, now she had to go back.

The forest didn't get any less confounding the second time. Patches of oaks and willows and patches of grass, some stippled trees, some plains, and a lot of thick vegetation that didn't let light through. In fact, all the trees seemed to be in different places than earlier...

Little flowers peppered the ground and gave a splash of blue or pink among the grays, blacks, and greens that the rest of the forest gave. Even these gave way to the closest thing to a suburban landscape she had seen yet, four hundred years before that became an idea. Before she could step foot out of the forest, however, she was stopped by the young cyndaquil from earlier.

She was going to ask him to help her find the ponyta, but he challenged her to a fight. She kept attempting to ask her questions, but figured the gauntlet was thrown when he threw the first punch and it made contact, making a surprising sting. She gave him a few more punches to realize she wasn't fighting him before she resigned herself to his own tactics and beat him just enough to get him to back down.

Finishing off with Scary Face, she knew well that he wouldn't try that again. So, she grabbed him by the neck and asked him her questions once again.

"He's probably at the post office! Ask for Aiolos."

She came to her senses and put him down as softly as possible, suddenly sheepish, and left in no hurry to Aiolos' post. Luckily, when she got there, he was standing around and was just about to go out to lunch. When she returned the letter and gold, he offered to repay her somehow when it clicked that she was the same totodile from earlier, alive and well. He took it from her and offered her a ride on his back to her home village, given the long distance. She agreed, and they delivered the letter and finished returning the revenue to the post office.

Waving goodbye to the town, she mentioned her surprise at the high rate of literacy around these parts. _For some reason, she didn't expect many of the locals to understand writing. _It was an odd feeling, knowing something is surprising but not why. Maybe she'd come from a land where literacy is far lower?

Nevermind, to stop thinking about it she wrapped herself even tighter into her cloak against the wind, leaning against his bioluminescent hair to prevent herself from falling off.

The warmth of his body heat made her doze off in the middle of the ride, it felt like just a blink of the eye before she got back to the Kecleon brothers.

Porfirio thanked Aiolos for returning her and gave him 5 of the coins she would have gotten for his troubles. He simply nodded, grinned, and turned back, happy to have spun even more revenue he had no need to report.

"So, I hear you're done with your work. Though, you did get some help it sounds like, so your reward may have to be slightly admonished. A mere 10 coins."

He took the money they piled up to give her, and let her count it out. _Only twenty-five?_

They grinned and noted her attentiveness. "And here's the extra 10 coins in value, a black square of cloth you can use for whatever. Whether it be a rag or a kerchief. We ran out of money while you were out," he said, not once faltering in the odd, toothy grin that threatened to broadcast malintent without quite getting there.

She shook her head disapprovingly and took the money, figuring she wouldn't rock the boat any more than she was already. Instead, she took it to Uri's home and took a 10-coin portion to give to him for rent.

He chuckled, taking it and putting it in his change box before returning to make dinner, the same way as he always had.

"So, you're finally getting around to learning how to make a living? I'd normally be much more reasonable, but watching an eight-year-old pull her weight—"

And it finally slipped out. So this was that young girl's body after all...

Uri realized what he said too, and tried to change the subject, understanding the futility of said attempt.

The cat was out of the bag on this one.


End file.
